When “the state” is the absence of a sour red date: Memory, materiality, and agency
When “the state” is the absence of a sour red date: Memory, materiality, and agency Go to Source
Scales of knowing
Scales of knowing Go to Source
Place, materiality, and gender in subaltern memories of long lives in a poor Beijing neighborhood
Place, materiality, and gender in subaltern memories of long lives in a poor Beijing neighborhood Go to Source
The illusions of “magical thinking”: Whose chimera, ours or theirs?
The illusions of “magical thinking”: Whose chimera, ours or theirs? Go to Source
“Where it was, I must come into being”
“Where it was, I must come into being” This article considers the problem of translation and radical interpretation from a post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspective, and challenges the notion of concept,…
Burning translations
Burning translations This essay radicalizes the call for foreignizing translation in anthropology by pushing translation beyond a reference to an anthropological self. What I recognize as “burning translations” responds to…
How to do things with worlds: A reply to responses
How to do things with worlds: A reply to responses Go to Source
The death of urban China: Reflections on Harriet Evans’s Beijing from below
The death of urban China: Reflections on Harriet Evans’s Beijing from below Go to Source
Life in old Beijing
Life in old Beijing Go to Source
All-encompassing ethnographies: Strategies for feminist and equity-oriented institutional research
All-encompassing ethnographies: Strategies for feminist and equity-oriented institutional research Ethnography, Ahead of Print. This article addresses the challenges inherent to conducting ethnography in all-encompassing institutions and presents strategies for equity-oriented…
Comparative urbanism and collective methodologies: Restoration projects in West Bengal and South East London
Comparative urbanism and collective methodologies: Restoration projects in West Bengal and South East London Asking who gets to compare, this paper advocates inclusive research methodologies through a discussion of comparison…
The psychedelic ritual as a technique of the self: Identity reconfiguration and narrative reframing in the therapeutic efficacy of ayahuasca
The psychedelic ritual as a technique of the self: Identity reconfiguration and narrative reframing in the therapeutic efficacy of ayahuasca Although so-called “psychedelic” substances have recently experienced a revival of…
Reality remodeled: Practical fictions for a more-than-empirical world
Reality remodeled: Practical fictions for a more-than-empirical world Most ethnographers have little use for models and other formal abstractions, yet even a staunch empiricist such as Franz Boas could appreciate…
Heathen hermeneutics: Or, radical “radical interpretation”
Heathen hermeneutics: Or, radical “radical interpretation” Translation—both multi- and intra-lingual—is vital to anthropological method. Drawing a distinction between two opposing modes of translation (“domesticating” versus “foreignizing”), this paper considers the…
The conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture: A reply to Philip Swift
The conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture: A reply to Philip Swift This piece is a response to Philip Swift’s article in this issue, where he critiques issues concerning…
The pedigree of the house: The case of Vdra-ba
The pedigree of the house: The case of Vdra-ba Vdra-ba society in western Sichuan, China, has been represented by evolutionist Chinese scholars as a primitive matrilineal society that was in…
Insecurities of nativism: A woman ethnographer studying her own community
Insecurities of nativism: A woman ethnographer studying her own community This article, through various ethnographic encounters, highlights the advantages and explores the challenges of fieldwork for a female researcher studying…
Virtue’s cosmos: Enaction as an anthropology of eschatology
Virtue’s cosmos: Enaction as an anthropology of eschatology As youngsters in a Pakistani megacity participate in a reading group to discuss the end of time by looking at the eschatological…
Fateful rite of passage: Charismatic ratification of elite merit in China’s National College Entrance Exam
Fateful rite of passage: Charismatic ratification of elite merit in China’s National College Entrance Exam This article argues that China’s National College Entrance Exam, the Gaokao, provides routinized charismatic ratification…
Religion in action: How Marian apparitions may become true
Religion in action: How Marian apparitions may become true According to Latour, religion and science have nothing in common. The two are successful (or failing) in quite different ways. Religiousness…